Disclaimer. I’m invested in IOTA, Ethereum, and Bitcoin. I’m not connected to the IOTA foundation and the following post is my own work and opinion. This is not meant to deter the collaboration of legitimate scientists. The IOTA Foundation is always grateful if thinkers help IOTAs adoption and vision.

Bells and Whistles

This is my response to the “responsible disclosure” of would-be neutral scientists that are destroying the reputation of IOTA, but also of the MIT (media lab), the Boston University (one associated developer), and Forbes.

In these times, fake-news and tinfoil stories can be found everywhere. The following post could be just a big coincidence, but if we allow ourselves in connecting some dots, maybe we get a better picture of “cryptoland”.

I’ll say it upfront: Competing projects try to harm IOTA as much as possible.

Let me start with this tweet of “fnord” because this pretty much sums up my motivation to write this summary.

No, cryptographers looking at it is awesome. Writing a hit piece and going around bragging about how the price tanked afterwards not so much

Unwinding all the details becomes unnecessary, but I’ll highlight the important ones:

IOTA has never been hacked.

CURL was tested under ludicrous conditions. The victim’s system would be running malicious code. In those conditions, stealing the key is trivial and much easier and effective. (custom wallet)

The discussed signing algorithm CURL was in an old version of IOTA, that was patched weeks ago. IOTA is using SHA-3/Keccak right now, there was no vulnerability to start with, but even less of a chance after that change.

In the meantime, Ethan Heilmann retweets an incredible total of 49 defamatory and blatant tweets. These were clearly, important and necessary actions by any reputable, objective scientist, both in content and form.

A few examples:

Madars Virza follows the crowd and tweets funny stuff about the legitimacy of the whole idea of IOTA:

One of many Twitter-reactions by Amy Castor, that already blocked me, and many other accounts that expressed criticism:

Amy Castor is already convinced that IOTA is a scam. She is working for Bitcoin Magazine and she’s a member of the Bitcoin Core Slack. Again, just another coincidence. Her agenda “don’t roll your own crypto” seems like a general campaign against former or recent initial coin offerings ( ICO’s)

Numerous tweets show her biased stance against IOTA. Some of which are pointing to sources on Bitcointalk and weird websites, that obviously try to discredit IOTA. Some others are just asking to know what are David Sønstebø’s benefits, what his incentive is for creating IOTA. – this is something that he explained more than once in a very clear way.

On top of that, Bitcoin Evangelist Andreas M. Antonopoulos tweets misinformation to justify the smear campaign:

BullshitShooting messenger to cover their own lack of competence@neha used responsible disclosure practices. @iotatoken had shoddy crypto

Responsible disclosure

Now, apart from this little list of tweets against IOTA, I’m going to look at the definition of “responsible disclosure“.
it says:

Responsible disclosure is a computer security term describing a vulnerability disclosure model. It is like full disclosure, with the addition that all stakeholders agree to allow a period of time for the vulnerability to be patched before publishing the details. Developers of hardware and software often require time and resources to repair their mistakes. Hackers and computer security scientists have the opinion that it is their social responsibility to make the public aware of vulnerabilities with a high impact. Hiding these problems could cause a feeling of false security. To avoid this, the involved parties join forces and agree on a period of time for repairing the vulnerability and preventing any future damage.

As we already know, the report of the Zcash, DAGlabs and Lighting Network devs was written as if there was a problem in effect, although the issue was already corrected.

Also, the Forbes article, that is written in present tense followed by the meetup title.

I conclude that in this case there is no “social responsibility to make the public aware of vulnerabilities with a high impact” because there is neither a vulnerability nor high impact.

Apparently, however, they seem to have the need to showcase IOTA’s alleged vulnerability, because the cryptographer decided to set up a live stream meetup to break CURL, the signing algorithm of IOTA.

They write:

“Now that all parties are out of stealth mode, I can formally announce that Ethan Heilman will be demonstrating how he, along with three researchers from MIT Digital Currency Initiative (DCI), broke IOTA’s nonstandard “Curl” hash function.

By doing so, they revealed in a $2B cryptocurrency a serious security flaw that could have allowed a hacker to steal user funds. (IOTA has since lost about 25 percent of its value, according to Coin Market Cap.)”

And they seem to also assume that when all cryptos are taking a plunge, IOTA shouldn’t have been affected. Even more interesting.

Now, to draw a conclusion

In theory, IOTA is a technology that is able to outperform almost every other cryptocurrency.

Especially the Lightning Network, that is trying to address Bitcoins scaling problems, and Zcash, that is possibly threatened by Masked Authenticated Messaging are in a direct competition with IOTA, let alone DAGlabs.

If independent scientists of a renowned faculty like the MIT or Boston University claim to be able to break IOTA, people listen, the market reacts immediately.

In order to make the public aware of vulnerabilities with a high impact, and to save people from losing money, they did disclose information in an unethical and wrong way, which added significantly to the loss of valuation. If that is not irony, I don’t know what is.

But these guys are not just rational, independent scientists. These people are investors and developers of competing projects, so no wonder that the tweets were written accordingly. Coincidental of course.

Direct conflicts of interest:

To support my thesis that this is a coordinated effort I point out the blatant and obvious conflicts of interest.

Ethan Heilmann and developer of DAGlabs.com, a direct competitor to IOTA (also Bitcoin Core developers involved). Due to almost 50 anti-IOTA tweets, I assume that he wants to change the sentiment or just coincidence

His project DAGlabs is in a fundraising right now.A direct competitor developing their own DAG solution and currently trying to acquire Series A funding partners. Coincidence.

Amy Castor is working for Bitcoin Magazin and is postulating questionable insults against the IOTA Founder while she is a member of the Bitcoin Core Slack and following an anti-ICO agenda. Bitcoin Magazine. Coincidence

To Cite Satoshiwatch: “Amy Castor – who propagated MIT’s malicious report/attack in the Forbes, is a writer for CoinDesk, Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group (DCG)
-“DCG ownership and crypto-investments include Zcash, Ripple, Rootstock, and etc.” Coincidence

Tadge Dryja is working for the Bitcoin Lightning Network, a direct competitor of IOTA. Coincidence

Centralization of the Coordinator:

Concerning the coordinator(Coo), it seems like no one is missing an opportunity to point out that the Coo centralizes IOTA. The Coo is a special node in the hands of the IOTA Foundation that sets milestones in order to prevent Sybil attacks.

If people want to attack the network, they try to become an omnipresence in order to conduct doublespends.

This protection is necessary as long as the network is in its infancy. The transparency compendium pointed this out and it’s common knowledge, that it’s solely for the purpose of protection. The developers cannot alter transaction or access seeds.

Just the day before yesterday, an attacker tried to take over the Tangle.

To make it clear what’s happening, he added a tag to the transaction: “BZWFL99FUCK9CORE99LETS9FORK”

The coordinator prevented a takeover from happening, everything is safe and sound.

But its purpose to protect the users of IOTA is of low significance, as it seems. People rather point out that due to the Coordinator, the whole system, idea, network is worthless. What a hypocrisy considering their biased stance.

At this point, I’m asking myself, why are these people insisting that the coordinator is a bad component? Obviously, the term centralization is undefined, because looking at this definition I could just claim that IOTA is still decentralized, especially because there are no blocks, no miners, the validation of transaction is not decoupled but in the hand of the users, unlike Consensus at Bitcoin. The comparison between blockchains and the Tangle looks therefore wrong, because of the “centralized part”, the coordinator has no participation in the consensus model.

When I look at Bitcoin, the true centralization happens due to the power of miners, where five of the biggest mining farms set 51% of the global Bitcoin hashpower.

Furthermore the centralization of developers, one can easily recognize when you look how many Bitcoin Core developers are connected with side projects or react in unison when a shitstorm is formed.

An incestuous innovation ivory tower, if you ask me.

If this was only about following science ethics, why would they fabricate a lurid headline, that clearly suggests that IOTA is still vulnerable?
Why would objective scientists talk about a crashing price and retweet dozens of tweets with an anti-IOTA sentiment?
Why would they decide to make a live-stream to showcase how to break CURL, although it’s not used anymore?

As a side note: The IOTA devs have not been invited to defend themselves or to talk about their point of view.

Since none of the mentioned persons kept a neutral stance, I can only conclude that this is a coordinated effort to destroy IOTAs reputation as ultima ratio because IOTA threatens their own projects.

Neha Narula, as the director of the MIT Media Labs, missed the chance to provide an independent peer-review of IOTAs -not in use- signing algorithm CURL.
Instead, she allowed that her team used its personal bias for their own purposes.

Amy Castor abandoned the ethics of journalism: “The duty of the journalist is to further those ends (justice and the foundation of democracy) by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues.” when she started ranting her personal agenda like a bulldozer and furthermore acted highly unprofessional against IOTA Founder David Sønstebø.

Her lacking ethics may be motivated by the fact that she has written about Zcash, at this point I can only assume that she owns Zcash, or it’s just another coincidence:

This “responsible disclosure” is not the work of objective, competent scientists of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or the Boston University as proclaimed. This is the epitome of a conflict of interest, where people use the names of big institutes.

In the game-theory, there are only rational agents. It seems these scientists are rational in that sense.

To cite Prof. Dr. Harald Lesch: “The economization of science is a problem: performance instead of position.”-Especially in the field of crypto currencies.

Interesting to see that Zcash, DAGlabs and Bitcoin enthusiasts develop the same habits when they talk about IOTA, the same kind of habits that banks used to, when they talked about Bitcoin back in the days.

So if this is the business conduct of the MIT Media Lab, the Boston University or Forbes, I wonder where we can still find unbiased science and information.

Development Update

Since a few weeks we are waiting for the new version. Just now, a small hint arrived that this may soon™ be over:

I’ll give you a short list of what we can expect and as an addition, a small summary of the biggest things you might have missed. The May Report 2.

The most important piece first: In a few days, IOTA will show its capabilities.

Right now, a day after Doms small update (above), the Coordinator is online again, but not attached to the Tangle.
That means:

An update of the new IRI is imminent.

As Dom pointed out: There will be no snapshot, for now.

We can expect big announcements in the following days (Maybe also when and where IOTA will be listed).

The wait is finally over!

With the new version, the spammers can be used for the main net again.

Countless new full nodes will be set up, mine including (Let’s meet in #nodesharing when the new IRI/GUI is here).

After the update the Tangle and the confirmation timings will be faster than ever.

YDX can withdraw all iota.

We’re getting closer to the “liberation of the Tangle”, when the Coordinator will be shut down in July. Then, the Monte Carlo Random Walk algorithm will be activated instead.
That way, the tip-selection and protection of the network will be ensured, while the scalability can unfold perfectly.

Take a look in our slack in the next days to catch the next instructions and announcements. That way, we can build the Tangle topology, again, -in no time.

If you are a developer, please take a minute of your time and look at the ecosystem fund, if you want to work with and for IOTA:

Consensus 2017

Cryptocurrencies, in general have come very far.
Consensus 2017 was held nowhere else than on the New York Broadway. Hundreds of participants, CEO’s, thousands of enthusiasts were there, to share their knowledge and to show the world that Blockchains (and the Tangle) are here to stay.

As a part of Dominik Schieners US-journey, He also participated in the “IoT & Blochchain: Powering the Connected Device Economy“-Panel on Monday 22th.

David Sønstebø wanted to participate, but due to an unforeseen accident he stayed in Norway and sent Dominik Schiener instead.

Dom did a great job in describing his vision to the plenum, while the content of the discussion were not actually focused on a comparison of IOTA to Blockchains.

Instead, the discussion were hold on a meta-level and the experts shared their thoughts and insights about the chances of collaborations of banks and Blockchains, their personal vision and the problems and chances they may face in the future.

Also part of Consensus 2017 was Dr. Carsten Stöcker who took part in a panel discussion about “Energy Markets“.

Carsten, as always, did a great job in explaining his vision and afterwards, he also found a moment of his time to explain why he didn’t get into IOTA’s details. -For a good reason.

He furthermore announced that IOTA is on the testing roadmap for “Share&Charge” where IOTA is used to tag IoT devices.

David added: “We’ll unveil more info on the ‘Digital Twin project’ together next week, so stay tuned for that”

For now, it’s unclear how and where these researches take place and what will be achieved, but considering the big list of known companies on the list, we can expect some interesting projects and fruitful results.

If you need a good comprehensive blog-post by Dominik Schiener, with an up-to-date overview of IOTA, I recommend this:

If want to have a deep-dive into IOTA, how it works, where it comes from and where we're going, read: https://t.co/jpbIQXj7Ul

Right now, Co-Founder Dominik Schiener is visiting a few important companies at the US-west coast (no info about who, when, what) , and after that, he is going to present IOTA at Consensus 2017 in New York, a great opportunity in the world of Blockchains, Fintech to show the world what’s coming after Blockchains.

Founder David Sønstebø’s plans to speak at Consensus 2017 changed due to an unforeseen accident, where David suffered an injury at his zygomatic bone.

Let’s hope for a speedy recovery!

Next on the agenda are the Accenture Open Talks on May 30th, where IOTA presents its technology.

IOTA will be at Accenture Open Talks presenting on the future of distributed ledger technology on May 30th pic.twitter.com/SUcDIl2Gq4

We have to keep in mind, that these are personal efforts, and not a matter of course that they put in their free time and energy to represent IOTA again and again.

Sure, that sounds like I was praising them like some saints, but to be honest: which project you know, has founders and devs that work relentlessly to spread the word, to build an ecosystem and community?

If there is one, I’m pretty sure it’s there for a way longer time, and it’s already listed, like Ethereum or Bitcoin.

These efforts here all happen before a listing, in very serious realms, hence my enthusiasm that IOTA is a spectacular project that has to be reckoned with!

Articles:

Here is just a small selection of the newest articles about IOTA.

Since the respective authors took their time, I suggest, you read them on your own:

Once again, the IOTA grassroots movement made a difference in showing the world that this is no ephemeral cryptocurrency but a serious endeavor that leads to a technology, that possibly changes everything.

The generous sponsors of the ecosystem-fund are part of the “Ecosystem-club”, initiated by Luey Forje, one of the early investors and a well-known community member.

The known sponsors are: Marc Bettinger, Achim Heiniger, Denzel Schwimmer, Tristan Turner, Khaoudy Yassin and some more sponsors which decided to stay anonymous.

IOTA has a big healthy community of voluntarily working people and sponsors that are unified and goal-oriented in bringing the technology to life.

The ecosystem fund is meant as a development booster to attract creative thinkers, developers and the possibility of funding people’s ideas if they are beneficial for IOTA.

The IOTA foundation announced in the official blog post a selection of possible applications in the following fields:

So, this is another conflict of interest of the DCI.
This pretty much proves the dirty business conduct of the MIT Media Lab, Joi Ito, and the DCI.
And people still think IOTA are the criminals... you can't make that up.